A POLITICAL ATHEIST'S LOOKS AT THE HAPPENINGS OF THE TIMES .
CLASS WARFARE, NO! IT'S CLASSIC WARFARE

Monday, October 21, 2013

MAN BATTLE STATIONS GOVERNMENT

As noted before on this blog, the word is out that both sides of the aisle are going to embrace and include cuts to the social programs in the upcoming budget negotiations. The President is on record supporting some of these cuts. Surface AFL-CIO to take a blunt pledge to stand against any member of congress who supports these cuts. Other unions are joining in to take that stand. I ask you to be on the alert to find any way you can help with this fight. Although writing letter and making phone calls and signing positions appear to be ineffective , if done in huge volumes cannot be ignored. You will see lot of opportunities to participte , so join the fight. See the statement from the union HERE.

The link below is a presentation by a couple of very rich guys giving a presentation to a group of young college folk that contains some of the most disingenuous slides I have ever seen. These slides claim that us old guys 65 and over are stealing from the young through our entitlement programs. Sure the graphs are impressive and of course to show they are selling facts when the truth is they are selling manure. Fast forward through this you tube show far enough to see the graphs and then you will understand why I am upset with the bullshit they are spreading. HERE

There fixes are of course the standard conservative line, cut entitlements , income test SS, reduce Medicare benefits and of course lower corporate tax rates to 0. (same line these are the job creators)
I won't bore you with more charts then they have I could but I won't because the truth is pretty simple and the fixes are even simpler. To fix SS you only have to raise the limit from $113000 to every nickle on income earner. All earned income should pay and included in that earned income is a transaction tax on every trade of stocks or bonds made. That fixes SS forever and hurts no one .

To fix medical costs the obvious answer is to go to a single payer system as they have in the rest of the industrialized world.

If you take the average of all these you end up with an average of about 8% of gdp and that is for coverage for everybody for everything.

Of course they will scream we gotta cut , we gotta cut. OK , here's what you cut. All corporate subsidies and tax breaks, confiscate all corporate funds stored off shore tax evasion. Close a majority of overseas bases. Cut the military to half it's current size. Stop all funding of operations around the world to take down governments we don't like, We could start with Cuba and Venezuela and clean up the other one by one. Make it mandatory for the government run health system to negotiate drug prices using the VA model.

That's just off the top of my head, there are many ,many more things that can be cut before you screw with the entitlement programs.